Islam allows
a man to have more than one wife, what is the significance of this? and
do you think this degrades womanhood? I have wondered about this aspect
of Isalm but on asking various people.. I have never got a consistent reply.
I was wondering if you could clear this for me.

Reply

It is more
than obvious that an ideal family setup is the one in which one man and
one woman decide to live their lives as man and wife. Islam makes no exception
to this rule. There are a few points from which we can clearly derive from
the Qur'an that according to the basic scheme of God for this world, a
family should consist of one husband and one wife only. For instance, we
can see that when God created Adam, it was not a team of women created
for his service, but just one, to be his partner. In the same way, even
today the balanced setup for a household is normally where one man and
one woman combine to form a family. There is nothing in the teachings of
the Qur’an or the narratives ascribed to the Prophet (pbuh) that negates
this rule.

But even though
an ideal family setup consists of one husband and one wife, there could
be a number of situations where the society demands of a person to compromise
the ideal family setup and enter into a second marriage for the general
good of the society and "womanhood". It is exactly such a situation
that is mentioned in Surah Al-Nisa’, where men are allowed to enter
into a polygamous life. I would like to present a brief analysis of the
related verses of the referred surah, so that the context in which
this permission is granted may be clear to you.

The setup in
which the verses were revealed is that the Muslims in the battle of Uhud
had lost many lives due to which many women had become widows and many
children had become orphans. In this setup God says:

People,
you must remember that you are all the creation of one God and the children
of one mother and one father; the orphans in your society are no different.
It is your responsibility to look after the well being and interests of
these orphans; if they are young and cannot look after their assets themselves,
you must look after these assets for them, and in doing so, you must not
unjustly consume their assets fearing that you will have to return it to
them when the time comes. In case you fear that you shall not be able to
fulfill your responsibilities (regarding the assets and well being of these
orphans) in a just manner, God allows you to marry the mothers of these
orphans; upto four marriages. But in case you fear that you shall not be
able to deal with these wives in a just manner then you must not enter
into a second marriage.

As can be seen
from the above context, the permission for a second marriage is granted,
not for increased pleasure but to provide ease in fulfilling a social responsibility.
In this context, we may say that there are two conditions in which a person
is allowed a second marriage:

1) There should
be a socially justifiable reason for it;

2) If a person
fears that he shall not be able to maintain a just balance in his dealings
with his wives, he must not enter into the second marriage.

It is obvious
that when a permission is granted for something, people may take advantage
of such permission and use it for satisfying their personal pleasures.
The Islamic state, in such a case can take action to check the misuse of
such allowances.

In the present
times, where a second marriage is looked upon with disgust, there are many
instances where a widow has to spend the rest of her life all alone and
nobody wants to marry a divorced woman etc. A man, who is naturally inclined
towards marrying a young woman for his only wife, may be willing to take
an older divorced or widowed woman for a second wife. One of the results
of this allowance in the Arab society was that men took upon themselves,
as a responsibility, the support of divorced and widowed women by taking
them as their wives. This, as can be clearly seen was a great advantage
of the referred allowance.

To summarise
the above points, Islam does not in any case advocate polygamy, it only
allows polygamy, in certain cases where a person feels that a second marriage
may help him in carrying out an important social responsibility, that in
his opinion, he must fulfill. A second marriage, for the sake of conjugal
pleasures alone, is against the spirit of Islam and may be prohibited by
the Islamic state.